Tag: Dayton massacre

Last weekends mass shootings, and GOP’s unwillingness to address them, leaves Minnesotans exasperated and angry

Last weekend, the U.S. suffered two separate horrific mass shootings, one in El Paso and one in Dayton. Despite calls from millions of Americans, Donald Trump and the GOP refuse to take any actions to address the lax gun laws that enable these mass shooters from acquiring these weapons that, in the case of the Dayton, Ohio shooter, gave the killer the ability to kill nine people and injure 27 in less than 30 seconds. 

The shootings in El Paso and Dayton are horrifying, vile, and absolutely heartbreaking. It’s time to stop mincing words: these shootings happen because Republicans refuse to enact common-sense gun safety reforms. These shootings will continue to happen unless Republicans change their minds or are voted out of office. Since the former is highly unlikely, the Minnesota DFL and the Democratic Party will be working damn hard to unseat every Republican standing in the way of the gun safety laws we desperately need.

VIA DFL Chairman Ken Martin’s Facebook page:

“I wish I was shocked by what happened in El Paso and Dayton yesterday. These actions happen so frequently now in America that we have become desensitized to these horrific murders. We quickly condemn, we send our thoughts and prayers and then NOTHING happens. We go back to our lives and then the cycle repeats.

Continue reading “Last weekends mass shootings, and GOP’s unwillingness to address them, leaves Minnesotans exasperated and angry”

Video emerges of Trump ranting about ‘crazy’ Beto O’Rourke’s crowd size during El Paso hospital visit

AlterNet logoFollowing mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, President Donald Trump visited both of those cities on Wednesday — and a video posted on Twitter shows that even when he was visiting a hospital, Trump couldn’t resist insulting Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.

In the video (which was filmed at University Medical Center of El Paso), Trump can be seen exchanging pleasantries with hospital staff with First Lady Melania Trump at his side. And when he discusses visiting El Paso in February to speak at a rally, Trump brags about attracting a larger crowd than O’Rourke (who also had a February event in that city).

“That was some crowd,” Trump says of his February rally in El Paso. “We had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot, and they said his crowd was wonderful.”

View the complete August 8 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Trump attacks local leaders as he visits two cities grieving from mass shootings

Washington Post logoEL PASO — On a day when President Trump vowed to tone down his rhetoric and help the country heal following two mass slayings, he did the opposite — lacing his visits Wednesday to El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, with a flurry of attacks on local leaders and memorializing his trips with grinning thumbs-up photos.

A traditional role for presidents has been to offer comfort and solace to all Americans at times of national tragedy, but the day provided a fresh testament to Trump’s limitations in striking notes of unity and empathy.

When Trump swooped into the grieving border city of El Paso to offer condolences following the massacre of Latinos allegedly by a white supremacist, some of the city’s elected leaders and thousands of its citizens declared the president unwelcome.

View the complete August 8 article by Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Jenna Johnson and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s trip to Dayton and El Paso marked by protests, attacks on critics

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday traveled to El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, where meetings with first responders and survivors of mass shootings were marked by calls for tougher gun laws and the president’s attacks on Democrats and the media.

Trump stayed out of public view for most of the trip, which came just days after massacres in El Paso and Dayton left more than 30 dead and dozens injured. He held closed-door meetings at hospitals in both cities before making brief remarks at an emergency operations center in El Paso.

Most photos from the day’s trip came from official White House accounts, which showed Trump and the first lady smiling for pictures with hospital staff and meeting with patients recovering from injuries.

View the complete August 7 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

The El Paso and Dayton shootings weren’t an aberration. They were a statistical certainty.

The United States has been averaging more than one mass shooting per day for almost four years now.

On Saturday, millions of Americans went to bed mourning the latest deadly mass shooting — this one in El Paso, Texas — and woke up the next day to news of a second, in Dayton, Ohio. The weekend carnage left at least 29 people dead, and plenty of indignation about Republican lawmakers who refuse to take up any meaningful gun reform, continuing to take money from pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association.

In truth, however, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the close timing of these two attacks: the United States has been averaging more than one mass shooting per day for at least the past three and a half years.

According to the definition established by the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks every mass shooting in the country, a mass shooting is any incident in which at least four people were shot. And so far in 2019, there have been 255 such incidents. Monday, August 5 is just the 217th day of the year.

View the complete August 5 article by Adam Peck on the ThinkProgress website here.